Electoral Fraud in Ukrainian Early Parliamentary Elections 2014

This bachelor thesis deals with the problem of electoral fraud in Ukrainian early parliamentary elections in 2014. The incentive for choosing this topic was a negative historical experience with electoral corruption in Ukraine and the assumption that as during the last election to the Verkhovna Rada the situation with fraud would repeat again. The main objective is therefore to examine the process of early election and to answer the question if fraud actually has been noticed during them. The thesis is divided into four chapters.The first chapter is a theoretical description of the Ukrainian political system, definining the role of the legislative power and describes the system of parliamentary election. The purpose of the second chapter is to define and classify electoral frauds in order to use it for further investigation. The third chapter includes analysis of the parliamentary election in 2014, describes why they were held and answers the question why the previous government is considered to be illegitimate. The final chapter analyzes fraud that has been recognized during the pre-election phase, election day and during the process of vote counting and tabulation. For this analysis I use mainly legislative documents and reports of international organizations monitoring election.